Top 102 Albums⁺ No 10. Chairs Missing.

Top 102 Albums⁺ No 10
Chairs Missing - Wire

I could have selected any of the first three Wire albums for this slot. Each is very different but the quality is the same. Taken as a body of work it these three records are an uncompromising,  cryptic and rigorous attempt to re-imagine the possibilities of rock music. And there have been many who have revisited these albums as a source, including some who took a little more than inspiration. (Stand up Elastica.)

Taster for the new/old Wire album.

Wire in 1977, 35 years ago!

Taster for the new/old Wire album.
Wire have retooled songs, many just sketches from the period after 154 which can be heard on Document and Eyewitness.

The new album, called Change Becomes Us hits the shelves in March. Here's a taster.

and here it is again, as it was, and always shall be - WIRE

I went to my first gig in a while last Saturday night and saw Wire for the first time approximately 32 years since first hearing them on John Peel. I was chaperoned by my teenage daughter.

Wire, in case you don't know are one of the greatest bands to emerge from the punk era, from the sound of a crowd ignoring them on the Live at the Roxy album through their first three essential albums Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 and on the sound of REM copying them on Document and Elastica basing a career on them to such an extent that they had to pay them royalties. They have reformed and broken up a few times but have always produced interesting and often exceptional work. They are currently touring to support their new, and very strong album Red Barked Tree.

The venue was downstairs in the Academy in Middle Abbey Street, just across the road from where I had one of my first jobs (in the then Curzon Cinema). Ghosts seemed very present. The venue reminded me of venues I had been in or played in. Briefly I felt overcome by a sense of the past. Sometimes I feel the truth in the idea that there is something looking out through our eyes, something not altogether familiar to us. I  felt like I was suddenly looking out through my twenty year old eyes and got a real physical sense of why it was that I wanted to be in a band. I almost felt that way again.